1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information retrieval apparatus and a computer program that retrieve a file (web page).
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2007-301984, filed Nov. 21, 2007, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
In recently years, a web system that makes information widely available using the internet has been sufficiently realized, and a lot of information can be browsed. Therefore, a technology for simply retrieving useful information becomes important. For example, a method for retrieving a similar web page based on the text information of an entire web page is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication, No. 2006-236221. In another method disclosed in a Non-Patent document, when an user selects and traces a retrieval keyword displayed on a touch panel by drug operation of a pen using an input interface with the touch panel and the pen, a retrieval system (search engine) provides the user with a retrieval intention menu (requirement for seeing a map, a press release, or the like) in response to the selected keyword and the type of peripheral word such as enterprise, facility, or the like (refer to “Successive Information Retrieval Method with Pen-based Interaction based on Estimation of User Intention”, Masaru Suzuki, Kosei Fume and Yasuto Ishitani, Proceedings of Interaction 2006, pp. 101-108, March 2006, in Japanese).
However, a minimum unit that can be specified by the user is the entire web page and the user can not specify to which keyword on the web page attention should be made, in the prior art of JP2006-236221A.
There is a problem in the prior art of the above Non-Patent document that, although the user enables specification of the keyword, highlighting an object on a touch panel is annoying. Furthermore, an operation to specify the keyword is not easy in a terminal, like a cellular phone, having an only limited input interface or device such as a numeric keypad, a direction key and so on. In fact, a household appliance such as TV game having functions of internet access and web browser, a car navigation system, and the like have been recently realized. The input operation is usually made by a small remote control apparatus in such appliances. In general, since the remote controller only has the limited input interface such as the numeric keypad, a direction key and the like, the operation to specify the keyword on a display is annoying.